According to #romneymath , 3025% of jobs lost since February 2009 have been by women.
This is not a joke. Mitt Romney is actually making this argument. Except that he starts the measurement one month earlier (January 2009, when Obama took office), and then he gets 92%. But the math is exactly the same.
The problem is, he’s comparing net jobs lost by women with net jobs lost overall [1]. Millions of jobs have been lost over Obama’s term (mostly in the first couple months), and millions of new jobs have been created to replace them. It turns out that we are very close to the point where net jobs lost will be zero, and we are also very close to the point where net jobs lost by women will be zero, but these two stats will not turn positive at exactly the same time due to random chance. More generally, dividing one net statistic by another net statistic, even when the first statistic (in gross) is a component of the second (in gross), is usually meaningless. You essentially get a random number.
So, Romney’s “92%” is just a random number. A number that just happens to sound plausible. But start just one month later, in February 2009, and you get 3025% [1], which is obviously complete nonsense.
The fact that Romney would mislead us like this just goes to show his utter disdain for voters. He clearly believes that voters are stupid and manipulating us is more effective than telling us the truth. And the math here is complicated enough that it’s difficult to explain exactly why it’s wrong, so much so that even the Washington Post could only meekly call it “true but false” [1].
What other interesting statistics can we concoct using this new math that Romney has invented? Here are some of mine:
Let’s say that my bank account today contains, by coincidence, $100 less than it did one year ago. Let’s also say that over the last year, I spent a total of $95 on pizza. Then, according to #romneymath , 95% of the money I spent in the last year was spent on pizza! What a waste! I should really be more careful with my money.
The national deficit in 2010 was $1.17T. Defense spending that year was $664B. According to #romneymath , that means 57% of our spending in 2010 was on the military! That puts us on par with North Korea’s insane “Military First” economy.
Can you think of any good ones?
A Pun Involving Travel 